


after the rain

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Finale, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-16 16:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16957104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: Raylan keeps visiting Boyd in prison. He doesn’t even try to pretend he won’t, doesn’t fool himself like he did for twenty years, thinking his road led straight away from Harlan instead of circling back around the mountain to the mines.





	after the rain

**Author's Note:**

> I was telling starkaddict about my more saccharine ideas for post-canon Raylan and Boyd (and Willa, because as she’s there she is by default important), and she said I should inflict them on the rest of you, so here you are. Originally posted on tumblr.

Raylan keeps visiting Boyd in prison. He doesn’t even try to pretend he won’t, doesn’t fool himself like he did for twenty years, thinking his road led straight away from Harlan instead of circling back around the mountain to the mines. He tries to keep it all separate, for a while, but if he’s learned anything it’s that you can’t escape the past (especially if you ain’t willing to shoot it dead, and it’s taken two dozen years for Raylan to admit that much over a prison phone), and eventually Willa wonders why he keeps going to Kentucky.

He tells her it’s business, but she’s a curious thing (takes after her mother, Raylan complains, probably going to start stealing bags of cash by the time she’s in third grade, lord knows) and so he tells her he’s visiting a bad man named Boyd Crowder, tells her some stories of the mischief they got up to as kids with shit for brains and nothing to do. (He never claimed to be any better than Winona. Thank god the woman married a man with some sense. Maybe Willa’s stepdaddy can make up for all her bad genes.)

And Boyd asks about her, of course. Raylan doesn’t want to tell Boyd shit about Willa - but he does. He tells Boyd about the ice cream flavors and the way he taught her to blow spitballs so she’s ready for the cafeteria in first grade, all the things he won’t tell Winona or the guys at work or the occasional women in his bed.

He hesitated, the first few times, because it’s dangerous to give pieces of yourself to Boyd Crowder, always has been: Boyd who’d leave his fiancée in prison, Boyd who’d sell out his most loyal men. But he looks at Boyd and thinks about Zachariah, feels it like a tack just under his skin that he’s taken Boyd’s son away. Raylan knows it’s for the best. Boyd would love that boy more than anything, but if there’s anything Raylan knows in this life, it’s that being loved by Boyd Crowder is the quickest way to a broken heart and an early grave.

He still feels guilty, though, so he hands over fatherhood by proxy, talks about the potty training he didn’t really do, talks about alphabet magnets and cartoons, starts showing Boyd some of the million pictures he has on his phone.

It’s possible he might be talking about Boyd, too, to Willa, telling her to flip off the monkey bars one more time so he can film it “for Kentucky”, doesn’t realize he’s doing it until Winona storms into his apartment one evening waving a piece of construction paper demanding to know why her daughter is making a Valentine for “Daddy's Boyd.”

Boyd asks what Willa’s reading, and Raylan starts bringing kids’ books to Tramble, somehow finds himself skyping his daughter from prison and sidelined from a serious discussion about Junie B. Jones. Boyd starts writing Willa letters. (He writes Raylan letters, too, hands them over every visit, and at least the letters to Willa don’t make Raylan blush.)

Richard worries about a convicted murderer writing to a five-year-old girl, proving once again that it’s a good thing Winona married him, since he’s the only one with any sense. (Winona might be the smartest woman Raylan’s ever known, except for the fact that she was fool enough to make Raylan Givens the love of her life. He knows what it is, to love someone so that you’d forgive them anything, so that you take them broken and barbed, grasp on and let the shards of them lacerate your skin. He knows what it is to be made a fool for love.)

He finds himself closer to fifty than forty and … settled, flying across the country catching fugitives, flying back through Kentucky on his way home, a few hours or days with his daughter and a few hours across a table from Boyd. At some point, they move their meetings from the telephone to the table to the trailer for family and conjugal visits. Boyd runs his barbed tongue over Raylan’s lips and laughs when Raylan insists he just asked for the trailer so the guards stop interfering when Raylan tries to strangle Boyd.

At some point, Willa gets in trouble for convincing her fellow second graders that they should join together and rebel to demand naptime. Upon arrival in the principal’s office, Raylan’s daughter declares she’s learning about unions from her daddy’s husband, Boyd. It turns out she’s also been collecting dues. Raylan’s daughter is either running a revolution or an extortion racket. With all she’s inherited from them — from Winona and Raylan, hopefully from Richard and god help them apparently from Boyd — she’ll probably run an empire, and run it into the ground before the year is through.

They send Willa north to Richard’s family for a week, in the hopes that staying with sane people who ain’t from Kentucky will help. On the way home, they detour through to Tramble and Raylan introduces her to Boyd. (Willa’s eight, the first time she meets Boyd Crowder face to face. Zachariah must be seven years old. Raylan’s never gone back, but he wants to every day, wants to call so badly he spends minutes squeezing his phone tight enough to shatter. He wants to know if Boyd and Ava’s son is all right; if he plays baseball, if he likes race cars or finger painting or reading books or singing union songs.)

Raylan watches Willa smile at Boyd, watches the careful way Boyd extends his hand, the look on his face when Willa wraps her arms around him instead. It terrifies him. Boyd Crowder clearly loves Raylan’s daughter, and there are few things more dangerous in this world than being loved by Boyd.

Willa’s not from Harlan, though — she doesn’t have the accent, doesn’t talk about her granddaddy’s granddaddy or know how to strip a branch for a fishing rod or how the frost settles on each blade of grass in the winter, how the fog rolls in at night. Willa will make her own way, without the hills in her shadow, without losing her heart in the mines. Maybe that will make it all right.

Raylan brings Boyd the seven books about horses Willa’s reading the next time he visits, tells him about the latest idiotic fugitive and listens to Boyd ramble about philosophy while he takes him to bed. It’s beginning to seem like it’s possible to love Boyd Crowder without running just to survive.

( _How’s Daddy Boyd?_ Raylan’s daughter asks, when he picks her up from school the next afternoon. _Did you bring my letter? Can we go see him again for spring break?_ )

It’s beginning to seem like the rest of Raylan’s life.


End file.
